Dark Eagles: A History of the Top Secret U.S. Aircraft

778

Steve Douglass, 'Project Black: The hunt for secret stealth aircraft,' Intercept Newsletter (December 1992/January 1993), 5.

779

Nigel Moll, 'Logbook: Aurora's Secret,' Flying (March 1993), 100.

780

William B. Scott, 'High Demand Stretches NRO Intelligence Assets' Aviation Week and Space Technology (February 1, 1993), 52. The NRO itself was founded in August 1960, but its existence was not officially acknowledged until the fall of 1992.

781

Steve Douglass, 'Federal File: Aurora Doesn't Exist.,' Monitoring Times (March 1993), 42. The claim that a sonic boom cannot be heard at long range is incorrect. On several occasions in 1985 the author heard the double sonic boom of the space shuttle over Edwards AFB from Long Beach, California. This was 100 miles or more away.

782

Steven Aftergood and John E. Pike, 'The High Cost of Secrecy,' Air and Space (October/November 1992), 46, 47.

783

Russ Britt, 'New Dawn for Aurora?' Daily News, May 17, 1992, Business sec.

784

Douglass, 'Project Black,' 5.

785

Moll, 'Aurora's Secret,' 100, 101.

786

Bill Sweetman, Aurora: The Pentagon's Secret Hypersonic Spyplane (Osceola, Wis.: Motorbooks, 1993), 12–15, 88, 89.

787

Bill Sweetman, 'Hypersonic Aurora: A secret dawning?' Jane's Defence Weekly (December 12, 1992), 14.

788

Bill Sweetman, 'Out of the Black: Secret Mach 6 Spy Plane,' Popular Science (March 1993), 56–63, 98, 100, 101. A January 13, 1993, article in Aerospace Daily indicated that the Skunk Works had studied a Mach 4–5 replacement for the SR-71 during the 1980s, but abandoned it about 1986 as impractical. Only drawings and small models were produced. The aircraft would have been about the size of the B-1B, with a long, tapered fuselage, and would have had an intercontinental range. Believers in Aurora dismissed the story as government 'disinformation.' One said, 'This article was a classic 'debunking' of a hypersonic Aurora in the complete spirit of UFO debunking from the 50's on.'

789

Douglass, 'Project Black,' 3, 4.

790

Douglass, 'Aurora Doesn't Exist.,' 42, 43.

791

Peter Roberson, 'Mystery plane: Model depicts spy plane, but Air Force denies it exists,' The Bakersfleld Californian, November 29, 1993, sec. A; and Michael Sweeney, 'If you want to see the SR-75, you must settle for the model,' General Aviation News and Flyer, 1 November